RP show - December 6, 1999

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

This week's Rick Pitino show was really excellent, actually. I think
the six days off may have helped. I'll dig up my notes for the past
two weeks and send summaries of those too.

1. He answered Lobel's question about the inability of the Celtics to
play with the lead. It's because the intensity goes up on both sides
of the floor in fourth quarters, and referees allow more physical play.
The Celtics haven't been stepping up. 

2. Pitino's philosophy of recruiting has always been to get offensive
players and teach them to play defense. He said it is the exact opposite
of Philadelphia, who has gathered a bunch of tough defenders in the hope
of eventually teaching them offense. In the long run, he feels his 
approach is better.

3. He needs fourth-quarter leadership on the defensive end. Teams like
Miami and San Antonio have Mourning and Duncan who step up on defense
in the fourth quarter to shut the other team down. The Celtics need
to do it as a team.

4. On rumors: most trades, including the Philly trade, are impossible
because of the salary cap. He explained base-year compensation a bit
more; basically, Antoine's salary is $10M but his BYC is $4.5M, so not
only do the Celtics have to take less back in salaries, the other team
has to be able to fit the $10M under the cap. Basically Antoine can't
be traded to any team that doesn't have around $5M under the cap, which
is essentially the Clippers or Bulls. I was wondering about this point
but I read a recent article which agreed with this. Anyways, Boston has
had essentially no dialogue about trades this year, and he is not looking
to trade anyone. If someone developed a bad attitude, he would look for
a trade, but everyone's attitude has been great.

5. Coaches' clinic was on stats. He gave a small example of the level
of detail that the coaching staff breaks down stats; on the individual
level he focused on field goal percentage. He broke down each player's
shots into drives, post-ups, and "other" shots - these may have only
been inside shots. Anyways, Walker was 39% on drives, 42% on post-ups,
67% on "other" which includes fast breaks, offensive rebounds, etc.
This shows that the staff has to work with Walker on finishing his moves.
Williams was 4/13 on drives because he tends to turn his back to the 
basket on drives. Pierce was a poor 8/27 on post-ups because he never
had to develop a post-up game before, but 74% on "other". Griffin was
0/8 in the post, 21/27 on others. Potapenko was 38% on post-ups. You
get the impression that nobody on the Celtics can score on a post-up.

He then examined outside shots, breaking down to 3 pointers, 17
footers out to three point range, and 5 to 17 footers. Walker, though
he was a respectable 18-51 on threes, was 1-10 on 17+ footers and 4-17
on 5 to 17 footers, which confirms what we've all talked about with
his complete lack of a midrange game. But going down the line, almost
every player shot better from three point range than on the midrange
jumpers. I don't think this was as obvious. So the staff, in practice,
works with the players on these midrange jumpers.

6. Overall team stats: the most notable ones he mentioned were that
the Celtics were giving up about 100.5 points and scoring a bit under
100. These have since gone down because of the low-scoring Philly
game. He wanted to score 104 and give up 96. This +8 point
differential struck me as almost absurdly optimistic so I checked
other teams. San Antonio is at +9, Portland is at +8, Sacramento
is a bit under +7, Miami is around +5. So you can't accuse him of
not having high goals. The other thing is that the Celtics are turning
the ball over more than they are forcing turnovers, which if it 
continued over the season would be a first for him; his career average
is 22 forced vs 15 given up, but that is by pressing 70-80% of the time.
He wants to force 17 and give up 15.

7. Why the Celtics don't press: he wants to build up a man-to-man 
defensive team and then use the press in situations to strengthen that.
In the past he used the press to camouflage his team's inability to
play man-to-man defense. Then he also admitted that his current team
lacks pure athleticism and is composed mostly of basketball players
rather than athletes: Walker, Potapenko, Fortson, Williams, Anderson,
even Pierce to some degree. Even his second unit is not ideally set
up to press. He said that when he imagines his dream pressing team,
it would be Seattle. Of course, having someone like Payton to key
your press is certainly a luxury.

8. He tried to get Lobel to take a shot at being an armchair GM. Lobel
said that he wouldn't keep the current team intact and mentioned Antoine
and Anderson as players that he'd want to step up (or be traded, 
presumably; he wasn't very clear). Pitino said that he wanted Antoine
and Anderson to step up defensively, and needed to develop their
physical skills to the point that they could guard their man without
help. He said that wasn't a really negative comment because 90% of
the players in the NBA need help to guard their man. He said that
Pierce is actually capable of stopping his own man but needs to 
concentrate and make sure he gets over screens. He also said that
with Pierce, teams are focusing their defenses on him as the Celtics'
star player, and he is only in his second year. He said that Pierce
was definitely untradable.

Alex